The Happy Place
The Happy Place is the second episode in season nine of . Synopsis Nick and Catherine investigate why a woman who was about to be married would have taken a swan dive off of her balcony. Also Grissom investigates the brutal murder of a woman found in an alley. The investigation gets tougher with the discovery that her two-year-old was with her when she was murdered. Meanwhile, things get personal for Sara when a hospitalized attempted murder victim from an old case she investigated is killed by her husband. Plot Catherine and Nick investigate the death of Sprig Grenigier, who dove to her death from the apartment she shared with her fiancé. Nick notices she received a call just before her death which is traced to a pay phone across the street from Sprig's apartment. Though they determine she was happy with her fiancé, the CSIs discover Sprig was trying to lose weight, and that she'd filed for unemployment after losing her job as a bank teller. She had been accused of stealing ten grand from the bank when she changed a customer's fifty dollar bills for a hundred hundred dollar bills rather than one dollar bills. To the bank, it looked like a scam Sprig was in on, but the her fiancé tells the CSIs she had no memory of what happened. The CSIs discover another bank teller who was similarly scammed and Catherine finds a connection: both women were seeing the same hypnotist to deal with various problems in their lives. Catherine and Nick pay a visit to the hypnotist, Viviana Conway, and witness how powerful her brand of hypnotism is. Catherine decides to compare the picture of the man who received the ten thousand dollars at each bank from security footage with Viviana's picture and get a match. The woman disguised herself as a man, went into the banks, gave the women hypnotic cues and stole the money. When Sprig figured out what Viviana had done, Viviana called her and gave her the cue for her honeymoon: to imagine herself in a bikini jumping into the ocean. Sprig did just that, only instead of the ocean she leapt from her balcony onto a bus full of people. A woman is found beaten to death in an alley; the CSIs identify her as Paula Bonfilio and speak with her college-aged son, Scott, who tells them his mother gambled away his college money. He says she'd called him at 10pm the night of her murder after to say she'd be gone for the night. He also mentions she was with her two-year-old, Lexie. The CSIs launch a search for the girl while Archie studies video of Paula gambling at the Tangiers. He notices her with a man with glasses and then traces her to Pete's Pawn shop. The CSIs manage to locate Paula's car with a prostitute and find Lexie at a children's play center. The team recovers prints on Paula's car and traces them to Leon Slocomb--the man with glasses from the surveillance footage at the Tangiers. Leon admits to roughing Paula up and taking her car and kid to scare her into paying her gambling debts, but insists he left her alive. The CSIs uncover a surprising suspect when they catch Scott Bonfilio cashing in a $500 chip Paula won the night of her murder. Scott confesses to Grissom that Paula was his lover, not his mother, and Lexie was their child. At age 15, Scott ran off with Paula, his guidance counselor at school, but was dismayed to see their relationship deteriorate once he came of age and she turned to gambling for thrills. When she called him after lost the car and Lexie, he beat her in a rage. He believes Lexie is better off. Greg calls Sara, still in town after Warrick's funeral, to the hospital where Tom Adler has just pulled the plug on his wife Pam, who had been in a coma for either years following a brutal beating and rape--a case Sara worked. Tom claims Tony Thorpe, the man who raped his wife, send him a note claiming he'd raped her again and was going to keep at it. Hoping to protect his wife, Tom pulled the plug rather than letting his wife suffer any more indignities. When Sara investigates, his story doesn't hold up: Thorpe is in a wheelchair, incapable of raping Tom's wife. Sara confronts Tom, and he admits that he just couldn't take it anymore--Pam was gone, and he was the only one suffering. Sara wonders why he couldn't just tell the hospital staff that, and Tom admits he was ashamed. The ordeal enforces Sara's belief that this life is no longer for her and she packs up and leaves both Las Vegas and Grissom behind. Cast Main Cast *William Petersen as Gil Grissom *Marg Helgenberger as Catherine Willows *George Eads as Nick Stokes *Eric Szmanda as Greg Sanders *Robert David Hall as Dr. Al Robbins *Wallace Langham as David Hodges *Paul Guilfoyle as Jim Brass Guest Cast * Liz Vassey as Wendy Simms * David Berman as David Phillips * Jorja Fox as Sara Sidle * Gabriel Casseus as Detective Williams * Archie Kao as Archie Johnson * Geoffrey Rivas as Detective Sam Vega * Larry Sullivan as Officer Akers * Sheeri Rappaport as Mandy Webster * Paula Francis as Paula Francis * Glenne Headly as Viviana Conway * Aldis Hodge as Tony Thorpe * Sam Murphy as Scott Bonfilio * Bruno Campos as Randy Hopper * Bruce Weitz as Leon Slocomb * Kristin Dattilo as Paula Bonfilio * Ivan Brogger as Jacob Wolf * Ryan Doorn as Brett Davidson * Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine as Tom Adler * Nicole Vicuis as Trixie * Linara Washington as Grace Powell * Michelle Anne Johnson as Pamela Adler * Bambadjan Bamba as Bellman * Gina Cancelliere as Herself * Ricki Noel Lander as Sprig Grenigier * Sam Upton as Ian Wallace See Also Category:CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Episodes Category:CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 9 Episodes